A Savage Hunger (Paula Maguire 4) by Claire McGowan

great, Mrs O’Neill. You didn’t need to go to such trouble,’ said Paula.
    She’d made a full farmhouse lunch for them, sliced ham, brown bread, hard-boiled eggs from her own chickens, two types of cake, a big pot of tea. She stood at the sink in her slippers and housecoat, apparently not planning on eating herself. A walking stick leaned against the door, and Paula noticed the kettle was wrapped around with insulation – she knew Mrs O’Neill had MS. ‘No trouble. It’s a long time since anyone came asking about our Yvonne. In them days it was all big strapping men from the police.’
    Paula heaped her plate with ham and cheese, then narrowed her eyes at slim Helen Corry, who sighed and took some sliced egg.
    Mrs O’Neill was fiddling with the tea towel. ‘I don’t know what you’d find after all these years. Could there be some DNA or any of that?’ She spent a lot of time watching CSI , she’d told them.
    ‘Possibly. But the search was thorough back then, from what we can see.’ Corry ate some ham. ‘The reason we called to see you is actually the Alice Morgan case.’
    ‘Aye. She come to the door a while back, asking for some water. The cottage pump was playing up, she said. I had a shock. You’ve seen Yvonne, her pictures?’ She indicated a school photo on the wall, of a slight, fair girl who could have been a younger Alice. ‘Short wee thing, with this great big jumper on her, even though the sun’s splitting the stones.’
    Corry nodded. ‘There is a resemblance. You’re saying she came to see you?’
    ‘We talked the odd time. She’d come in to say hello if she was walking past the place. I’d give her a good tea like this.’
    Corry paused with a slice of buttered bread in her hand. ‘I’m sorry – you’re saying Alice ate when she was here?’
    ‘Oh aye, every pick. She’s a good appetite for such a wee girl. Must have one of them fast metabolisms.’
    Paula looked at Corry. Strange. ‘And what did you talk about?’ she asked.
    ‘This and that. She asked me about Yvonne and I told her – you know, it’s a long time since someone wanted to hear, and I like to talk about her. All my ones and our Mary, that’s Yvonne’s sister, they’re sick of it, I think. No news in over thirty years. They’ve just given up. But wee Alice, she’d ask me a lot of things. Did Yvonne ever go in for fasting – of course, I said, we all fasted back then, on holy days of obligation. So lax now. You know what Lough Derg is?’
    Paula nodded, and Corry looked blank. ‘I’ll explain later,’ Paula said to her. ‘Yvonne went there?’
    ‘Aye. Trying to make up for what she did, giving up her vocation. I told her God wouldn’t blame her for leaving the convent – married love is sacred too. But she said when David died – you know he was killed in a car crash, God rest him – that was her being punished.’
    Paula knew the police had speculated about suicide back then – but then where was her body? In some boggy ditch or crevasse?
    Mrs O’Neill said, ‘Alice asked about the hunger strikes as well. And did I think it was connected, to Yvonne? Because of all those riots in town that day. I said not at all. If the Provos or the UVF shot her to make a point, they’d have left her body, wouldn’t they?’ She said it matter-of-factly, and it was close to Paula’s own thoughts on why the IRA probably hadn’t taken her mother, despite everything. They generally wanted people to know what they’d done. But you never could be sure. Terrorists were not a reliable source, after all.
    ‘What did you think, Mrs O’Neill?’ Corry cut a slice of cheese.
    She sipped from a china cup of tea. ‘I always remember it. She went out after lunch, and I said bye. She wanted to lay some flowers in church for the strikers – you know, they were dying. It was an awful time. Then next thing I looked up and saw it was near four, and her not back. And I thought – that’s strange. And you start to worry,